When Brian Gimmillaro looks at the weekly AVCA top 25 poll, he doesn’t see volleyballs as much as he does footballs.

The 49 ers rank 24 th in the poll and are the only Big West team ranked. Meanwhile, he scans the first 11 teams, and sees six Pac-10 teams, plus a seventh lower on the totem. He counts Big Ten schools on one hand and needs an extra finger, because they have six. The teams ranked Nos. 2 and 3 are from the Big 12.

There are only three schools in the top 25 that do not play some kind of football, the 49 ers, Wichita State and Santa Clara.

Eighteen of the 25 are schools proudly and disingenuously part of the bogus Bowl Championship Series.

Women’s college volleyball was hyper-competitive when the 49 ers coach was relatively new to the scene, competing for national honors each year and making the sport the signature power on campus, earning NCAA titles in 1989, 1993 and 1998 that are part of the resume that recently earned him induction into the sport’s Hall of Fame.

In 1989, when the 49 ers won the title, the entire Pac-10 was a monster and there were another dozen universities, most located in California, which were contenders. Nationally, Penn State, Texas and Nebraska were powerhouses. But the rankings weren’t clogged. Besides six Pac-10 schools, only 11 of the 32 schools in the postseason came from what we now know as the BCS six.

In 1998, when Gimmillaro and Misty May won the title, 23 of the 32 teams reaching the second round came from the power conferences, and the 49 ers were one of only three schools not playing football.

Things have only tilted further from there. The sport remains hyper-competitive – there are 317 schools playing Division I volleyball, double what there were 20 years ago – but lines clearly have been drawn to benefit those universities whose athletic programs are on metaphorical steroids.

“We’re not competing against schools as much as conferences now, and I’ve known this was coming for 20 years,” Gimmillaro said. “Back then, you competed for players with USC and UCLA and Penn State, but now we’re competing against the entire Pac-10 and all those conferences with power football programs.

“The Pac-10, Big Ten and SEC recruit to the conference. The TV packages are negotiated by conference and the promotions are for the entire conference. I know coaches from these conferences and there’s almost a belief that it’s better to lose a recruit to a school in the same league, because it’s a benefit to be strong and deep.”

A deeper conference means more bowl bids, and more teams in the NCAA basketball tournament, and more teams in the College World Series field and women’s volleyball and basketball – all growing in importance and revenue – and more money for the conference schools to share for all of their sports.

This is not a new trend. It’s been building this way for more than a decade, only exacerbated lately by the phony BCS.

In the past, Gimmillaro could start making his recruiting pitch as prospective student-athletes approached their senior year. Now he has to isolate recruits by the time they’re sophomores, because they’re already being inundated by recruiting mailers from the big schools.

The 49 ers coach can sell the merits of Long Beach and the university as good as any chamber of commerce member or government official. But it becomes harder when it becomes selling the Big West versus the Pac-10, and when the scope of a competing program can include football as part of that package.

“I always tell kids that they should make sure the school they choose meets their goals,” he said. Long Beach State can compete academically and both the men and women’s volleyball programs have been profligate when it comes to advancing careers in the sport. Six 49 ers volleyball stars won medals in Beijing, four gold and two silver.

But it’s a hard sell when competing schools take their volleyball recruits to football games, “and sell that as an important part of the process.”

Sounds like reason enough for Long Beach State to seriously consider bringing back football.

“There’s a certain prestige in that,” he said, “but it’s patronizing to women’s athletics to sell them on the school’s power in men’s sports. It sort of puts Title IX on its head.”

Gimmillaro isn’t shy. He’ll likely make some of these thoughts known when he is inducted into the Hall of Fame later this year.

For now, he’s trying to coach his 49 ers to a higher ranking, Big West title and another postseason shot. His 2008 team isn’t as talented as some of his past squads, “so our execution level has to be better than that of any team we’ve ever had. We have to work hard for every point.”

He’s also sticking to the those qualities that he considers to be most important for any coach.

“Accomplishment to me is when you look at young people at the end of their career and see if you’ve helped develop their lives, on and off the court,” he said. “I think the beauty of sports and what coaches do is reflected in who the student-athlete becomes. That can’t be hidden from view.”

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